Combat Wings: The Great Battles of World War II gives you the opportunity to pilot the most famous combat planes of the World War II. It will be up to you to tip the scales of victory in favor of the Allies. Experience aerial combat through the eyes of four pilots, fighting on four main fronts of the war. Take part in the Battle of Britain, help the Allies win the African campaign, defend Russia from the Third Reich’s powerful army and face fearless Japanese pilots over the Pacific.
GAMEPLAY
Piloting a wide range of aircraft, players engage in aerial dog fights and dangerous fighter missions across the major theaters of war during WW2. Featuring realistic WW2 aircraft and an unprecedented multiplayer experience, Combat Wings introduces cutting-edge multiplayer features allowing players to challenge each other in different multiplayer modes including Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Racing, Team Racing, Bomb-Target Hunting, Mission Survival and Fleet Escorting.
FEATURES:
• Pilot the greatest aircraft ever made
• Triple A: Aerial Arcade Authenticity
– explosive arcade action alongside advanced physics and painstaking recreation of actual events
and aircraft to create an experience that’s easily accessible but hard to master
– All aircraft are based on authentic designs
• Free Flight mode that enables players to choose a plane and roam over faithfully created environments
• 20 different planes, fighting on all fronts of the war
E3 Impressions:
This meeting got off to a bit of a late start causing this presentation to be reduced as well as other City Interactive presentation paired with it, Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2. As a result there wasn’t a lot of Q & A but was really just showing us a truncated demonstration of the game. That doesn’t mean what we saw wasn’t impressive.
The game is set back in the 1940s when air to air combat was a lot less neat. Missiles weren’t just fired from miles away, there was a good chance you would see the face of your foe as it plummeted through the clouds or exploded in mid-air. The aircraft for this game were extremely well-rendered and historically accurate (I am an airshow junkie, what can I say?) and the terrain for the most part was very well created even if there were some terrain disappearing and re-appearing issues still and the clipping on the edge of the aircrafts, particularly the one you are piloting, needed a bit of work. Normally I wouldn’t be quite so critical of a work in progress demonstration but their target release date is September 13th, which means the game should be pretty well polished up and just requiring some fine tuning. Some parts of the game are definitely ready to go, the damage system to the planes was very well done as is the crashing renders. Shots to the wings cause debris to fly off and the wings to catch fire. A lot of effort and time was put into making the damage system as accurate as possible right down to how the crash would look as a result of the damage and how each attacks signature damage would effect the outcome of the enemy. If you shred his tail the enemy will go down differently than if you sheer a wing off. These are the elements that will pull a player in, hold their suspension of disbelief and make them start leaning back and forth in their chair as they pilot. Their Ace Mode for new or younger pilots also makes the flying a lot easier so that a wider audience can enjoy the game without getting to frustrated.
The missions will take place at Iowa Jima, Midway, Africa, Russia, The Battle of Britain and the Pacific and there will be 30 missions (each running about 15 minutes to keep them short), 4 campaign settings and up to 60 planes. Owners of the Wii should know that it will have only about have the planes available but plans to utilize the nun chuck as a yoke. That is almost worth the price of the game right there, a nun chuck yoke sounds like fun! As for multiplayer, the most asked question of the company as far as I have seen, at the meeting they could only smile and shrug, guess we will have to see if that is ready when it launches.
The Last Call:
It is nice to see a development team who wants to remind us of the gritty closeup nastiness of dog fighting in the past. Today battles are so sterile in the air, with missiles fired from miles away, that it is easy to forget during the last Great War great battles were fought face to face in the skies and pilots often had to face the humanity of their kills as they jigged their planes to avoid their enemy’s ball of flame. City Interactive is doing their best to remind us.
